Lawsuit against Xbox 360 design moving forward

Most people with an Xbox 360 know the fear of bumping into the console while a disc is spinning. You cringe at the rattling of the disc, and pray to whatever god or gods you worship that you’ll not need to make another trip to Best Buy or order another copy of the game from Amazon. This design flaw, in which the console can cause the disc to become scratched to the point of being unplayable, has been brought to court.

Ars Technica reported that the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals set the table for Microsoft to potentially face a class-action lawsuit over the issues. Microsoft claims that the issue is only apparent in 0.4% of their consoles, and that the issue is not nearly widespread enough to warrant a court case.

While the case has been pushed forward in court, this is not the first time the Xbox 360 has had hardware issues. In 2005, Microsoft was sued over a heating issue with the console. As well, the Xbox 360 had it’s Red Ring of Death issue that already cost Microsoft over $1 billion to fix. With the console selling over 86 million copies as of last year, however, it’s hard to say whether these hardware issues had held back the system from being a strong competitor in the console market.